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We are all being DUPed into a merry splurge

Dominic Lawson

DUP profligacy catches the national mood: cuts are so last government

The Conservative Party won an overall majority of parliamentary seats on the mainland, otherwise known as Great Britain. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) won an overall majority of Northern Ireland’s constituencies. So there’s a certain geographic logic in the impending parliamentary pact between the two parties.

The DUP also adds much-needed support for the prime minister’s stated Brexit objective: she seeks a settlement that removes the UK from both the single market and the customs union, to be replaced by a bespoke trading arrangement. That approach is also the one favoured by the DUP’s election manifesto, which pointedly reminded voters: “The DUP had opposed joining in the first place.”

However, the party is no longer the vilely bigoted and sectarian anti-Catholic satrapy of the Rev…